5 ms·

Please don’t go to the developing world to try and pick up women, that’s really gross and exploitative behavior.

csomar 9y ago
That's a ridiculous assumption. I come from a more developing country than both Thailand and the Philippines. Edit: I’m not white either.
- jonathanyc 9y ago
  It’s not really a ridiculous assumption; Thailand and the Philippines both have large sex tourism industries. In particular, for the past few years there’s been a large focus on illegal child sex tourism in those places. Just explaining why your comment might have rubbed people the wrong way, though you might not have deserved it.
  - csomar 9y ago
    No it is ridiculous. You just made an assumption and an accusation. While both these countries have a big sex tourism scene, I have found many of the girls I dated not really aware of it. Most of them were attracted to the different physic and the novelty of dating a foreigner. Sure it doesn’t help the local men but well, I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong here. That’s something that really bother me on HN. Where people play judges with no relevant facts.
    - jonathanyc 9y ago
      Dude, no one is accusing you of being a sex tourist, and at the same time it was absolutely not a ridiculous assumption until your clarifying comment; I don’t know what else to say. It’s just applying Bayesian statistics. You seem to be taking this a bit too personally. If someone assumed that a school shooter was a man, that would not be a ridiculous assumption, and I would not be offended even though I am a man and not a school shooter. Chill out.
      - tripletao 9y ago
        > It’s just applying Bayesian statistics. You seem to be taking this a bit too personally. When store security "apply Bayesian statistics" to black shoppers, the shoppers tend to take it personally. I don't see what makes the assumption here more okay. I'd venture that most people wouldn't take the suspicion that their relationship with their partner was in fact a commercial sex transaction particularly well. And your example is not too parallel. Do you not see any difference between assuming that some stranger who did a school shooting shares your gender, and assuming that you personally are a sex tourist? I read a story from a white guy somewhere in SE Asia who was confronted by a Western tourist who'd read a few too many Nicholas Kristof columns, and attempted to separate him from the child he was surely about to rape. It was his daughter...
        jonathanyc 9y ago
        It doesn’t seem you’re very familiar with either this area of ethics or with statistics, so I don’t think this can be a productive discussion. I’ll just note that you’re seriously comparing someone posting “go to Asia because it’s easier to have sex there” with a black person walking into a store. It sounds to me like you are just disproportionately sensitive about this because you feel like in this case you are the one being profiled. On top of that you’re equating harassing a shopper to not even accusing someone of being a sex tourist, just pointing out that sex tourism is a thing. You need to step back and look at this in perspective. That’s it from me.
        tripletao 9y ago
        "Have sex" is pretty clearly a proxy for "form some kind of intimate relationship with a woman" here. If it were just about the sex, a local prostitute would be more cost-effective than relocation to Thailand. I'm not sure what here makes you think I don't know math, and that's not something I'm often accused of. The point at which sex tourism is a serious problem that deserves attention comes well before the point where any foreign man there can reasonably be accused of it. You could have raised the issue in a way that made it clear you meant no suggestion of that against anyone here. Most people still take "you might not have deserved [to be suspected of being a pedo]" as an accusation--"might" implies "might not". If he'd said "New York City" instead of "Thailand", then would his comment have been fine? Must good honorable foreign men write off a country entirely once enough other foreign men do something bad? What's the tipping point? Is there some prostitution rate and GDP per capita at which Bangkok will be okay again? Do the thresholds vary with the man's race and income? Race only? > It sounds to me like you are just disproportionately sensitive about this because you feel like in this case you are the one being profiled. This was my first post in response to this story. So I'm not sure why I'd feel like I was being profiled, unless this is some kind of implication that I am (oops, "might be") a sex tourist too. I don't and have never lived in SE Asia, or had sex with anyone there. I get that you think I'm wrong. You've expressed this clearly, but you've made no attempt to explain why. I'd venture that if you stepped back and looked at this in perspective, you'd find a more difficult moral landscape than you currently perceive. ETA: Seriously, you're dancing around the idea that a poster here is a child sex tourist--an active pedophile, a man who rapes children, a criminal rightly considered among the worst imaginable. If there's no reason to suspect that he's a child sex tourist, then why was your (accurate) statement that that's disproportionately common in Thailand relevant? Given the opportunity, the closest you got to retracting the implication was to say he "might not have deserved" it. And you think I'm wrong to compare this to a false accusation of shoplifting? A foreign man living in Bangkok really is more likely to be a sex tourist than average, just as a black shopper is more likely to be a shoplifter. (Yes, disparate enforcement against black vs. white shoplifters skews the raw statistics against black people. No, this doesn't explain the full difference. Controlling for income and other factors removes a lot of the difference; but store security doesn't have that information, so that's not relevant.) I think that's the "Bayesian statistics" you're talking about. The point is that these real, nonzero correlations do not justify making the lives of entire classes of people worse. I think you owe the poster an apology, not dismissive instructions to "chill".
    - meowface 9y ago
      You just said lonely men should move to those countries because it's easier to have sex there. The leap from that to "sex tourism" is not big.
  - donttrack 9y ago
    Yes it’s ridiculous. Stop this nonsense
adbge 9y ago
Indeed, he should stick to his own race! /s Seriously, the rhetoric around dating foreign women is absurd. Gross and exploitative? A consensual relationship? /Really?/ Compare, for instance, the socially mandated opinions we're supposed to hold around adopting a child from a foreign country versus "mail-ordering" a bride. Most of the moral arguments for the former apply just as much toward the latter, yet the latter is "gross and exploitative"--why? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the first is associated with movie stars while the second is mostly low-status men?
- donttrack 9y ago
  Totally agree. I am sick and tired of being judged by people - especially western women - who thinks I am exploiting some young Asian woman. It makes me quite angry sometimes - they don’t know anything about us or how we live.
- meowface 9y ago
  The issue isn't with dating foreign women, but moving to a low GDP/standard of living country because you want to more easily find a partner. The reasoning is "women are more likely to date me, have sex with me, or marry me because my race is a status symbol / because I have money". This is not the foundation to a healthy relationship.
  - mercer 9y ago
    I'm not saying I disagree, but still: why not? More than one person I know is in a relationship with someone from a 'poorer' country and both parties seem to be pretty happy with the outcome. And wasn't just men who were from the richer countries either.
    - meowface 9y ago
      I'm sure there are many people who meet organically with people from developing countries and start a genuine romantic relationship, but that doesn't appear to be what the parent poster was talking about.
donttrack 9y ago
It’s funny how women always consider it exploitative when men “pick up” an Asian woman. I met my wife in a Walmart in China and we are quite happy together. My friend is married to a Philippine woman. She worked at Apple and is quite well educated. Even is she wasn’t - I don’t know what the problem is.
- noobermin 9y ago
  It depends on the context. If someone is using their money and status as a way to coax someone into sex then that is objectionable. Then, there is the context that "Philippines/Thailand" bring sex tourism in some peoples' minds. That said, they explained themselves that they aren't exploiting people and most people are just being uncharitable in their reading. I'm just saying it's understandable. With the metacrap done, I'll say it's weird, especially when there is this odd stigma specifically around white men dating asian women[0]. If anything, thinking it's usually "exploitative" furthers racial stereotypes that asians[0] are somehow more naive and childish than white people. [0] The idea of an Asian woman itself is a little ridiculous because Asia is a continent, but that's a digression.
  - dingaling 9y ago
    > If someone is using their money and status as a way to coax ... But that's exactly how it works in a bar in Detroit, or Edinburgh or wherever with people of the same 'group', just with a less explicit wealth signal. Here's a thought experiment; start chatting to a [man|woman] in a bar. When the subject turns to drinks, ask if they'd buy because you're on unemployment benefit and don't have much cash. Expected result? Now try the experiment again but buy the drinks and make sure to set your Porsche keyfob in sight when reaching for your wallet. Unless you are very, very charismatic and symmetrically attractive I expect two differential outcomes.
    - noobermin 9y ago
      I think you are making something like a soft-continuum fallacy. What I'm talking about is picking up girls in destitute poverty situations, in which they'd either starve and live in economic insecurity or date you. That is objectionable. It's different than being wealthy and dating someone who is economically secure but perhaps not as wealthy as you. Personally, I think trying to buff your sexual appeal using your wealth is kind of silly, but I understand it happens and I don't judge (in a moral way) people in the latter case I pointed out in the last paragraph.
slantaclaus 9y ago
I think it’s fine
CuriouslyC 9y ago
While I agree that going to a third world country to get laid is just a bad idea, I've spent enough time in the Philippines to learn about the issue from both sides. Family is a big deal there, and taking care of your family is way more important than basic physical attraction. Additionally, a western husband is a status symbol, above and beyond the financial support they provide. This mindset is so ingrained that mothers, aunts and other female family members will try to play match-maker with you when they know you're single. These girls aren't being exploited, if anything they're the hunters and you are the prey. Personally, I don't see a problem with a woman making a choice to support her family of her own free will. If that's the only way that an extremely awkward westerner can find a mate, I say go for it.
- meowface 9y ago
  Wouldn't they feel low self-esteem at the thought that the person they're dating or having sex with is only dating or having sex with them because they're western or have money? I feel like that wouldn't really abate their insecurity.
  - drivingmenuts 9y ago
    On the most base level, it might fall under "had sex, don't care". But on a different level, that person now has a family that wants his presence, that looks upon him as being important. So, maybe that's a big boost to the old self-esteem.
    - meowface 9y ago
      But none of that is actual romantic love. As someone who had almost no contact with the opposite sex for most of my life, romantic love is what I was missing and what I needed. These are bandaid solutions to the problem.
      - CuriouslyC 9y ago
        People in arranged marriages in India report higher overall satisfaction than people in western marriages. You can learn to love someone, people do it all the time. Romantic love (i.e. infatuation, to use less loaded language) isn't all its cracked up to be either. It's just a state your body produces to encourage reproductive behavior. It produces great highs now, at the cost of great lows later, and thus it's terribly addictive. It's no more noble than heroin.
drivingmenuts 9y ago
It's also a survival technique. If you don't fit in with one group, find another that you can fit in. I doubt I could ever do that - I'm coming to grips with probably dying alone - but I'm not going to judge someone else for trying to avoid that fate.

That's a ridiculous assumption. I come from a more developing country than both Thailand and the Philippines. Edit: I’m not white either.

jonathanyc 9y ago
It’s not really a ridiculous assumption; Thailand and the Philippines both have large sex tourism industries. In particular, for the past few years there’s been a large focus on illegal child sex tourism in those places. Just explaining why your comment might have rubbed people the wrong way, though you might not have deserved it.
- csomar 9y ago
  No it is ridiculous. You just made an assumption and an accusation. While both these countries have a big sex tourism scene, I have found many of the girls I dated not really aware of it. Most of them were attracted to the different physic and the novelty of dating a foreigner. Sure it doesn’t help the local men but well, I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong here. That’s something that really bother me on HN. Where people play judges with no relevant facts.
  - jonathanyc 9y ago
    Dude, no one is accusing you of being a sex tourist, and at the same time it was absolutely not a ridiculous assumption until your clarifying comment; I don’t know what else to say. It’s just applying Bayesian statistics. You seem to be taking this a bit too personally. If someone assumed that a school shooter was a man, that would not be a ridiculous assumption, and I would not be offended even though I am a man and not a school shooter. Chill out.
    - tripletao 9y ago
      > It’s just applying Bayesian statistics. You seem to be taking this a bit too personally. When store security "apply Bayesian statistics" to black shoppers, the shoppers tend to take it personally. I don't see what makes the assumption here more okay. I'd venture that most people wouldn't take the suspicion that their relationship with their partner was in fact a commercial sex transaction particularly well. And your example is not too parallel. Do you not see any difference between assuming that some stranger who did a school shooting shares your gender, and assuming that you personally are a sex tourist? I read a story from a white guy somewhere in SE Asia who was confronted by a Western tourist who'd read a few too many Nicholas Kristof columns, and attempted to separate him from the child he was surely about to rape. It was his daughter...
      - jonathanyc 9y ago
        It doesn’t seem you’re very familiar with either this area of ethics or with statistics, so I don’t think this can be a productive discussion. I’ll just note that you’re seriously comparing someone posting “go to Asia because it’s easier to have sex there” with a black person walking into a store. It sounds to me like you are just disproportionately sensitive about this because you feel like in this case you are the one being profiled. On top of that you’re equating harassing a shopper to not even accusing someone of being a sex tourist, just pointing out that sex tourism is a thing. You need to step back and look at this in perspective. That’s it from me.
        tripletao 9y ago
        "Have sex" is pretty clearly a proxy for "form some kind of intimate relationship with a woman" here. If it were just about the sex, a local prostitute would be more cost-effective than relocation to Thailand. I'm not sure what here makes you think I don't know math, and that's not something I'm often accused of. The point at which sex tourism is a serious problem that deserves attention comes well before the point where any foreign man there can reasonably be accused of it. You could have raised the issue in a way that made it clear you meant no suggestion of that against anyone here. Most people still take "you might not have deserved [to be suspected of being a pedo]" as an accusation--"might" implies "might not". If he'd said "New York City" instead of "Thailand", then would his comment have been fine? Must good honorable foreign men write off a country entirely once enough other foreign men do something bad? What's the tipping point? Is there some prostitution rate and GDP per capita at which Bangkok will be okay again? Do the thresholds vary with the man's race and income? Race only? > It sounds to me like you are just disproportionately sensitive about this because you feel like in this case you are the one being profiled. This was my first post in response to this story. So I'm not sure why I'd feel like I was being profiled, unless this is some kind of implication that I am (oops, "might be") a sex tourist too. I don't and have never lived in SE Asia, or had sex with anyone there. I get that you think I'm wrong. You've expressed this clearly, but you've made no attempt to explain why. I'd venture that if you stepped back and looked at this in perspective, you'd find a more difficult moral landscape than you currently perceive. ETA: Seriously, you're dancing around the idea that a poster here is a child sex tourist--an active pedophile, a man who rapes children, a criminal rightly considered among the worst imaginable. If there's no reason to suspect that he's a child sex tourist, then why was your (accurate) statement that that's disproportionately common in Thailand relevant? Given the opportunity, the closest you got to retracting the implication was to say he "might not have deserved" it. And you think I'm wrong to compare this to a false accusation of shoplifting? A foreign man living in Bangkok really is more likely to be a sex tourist than average, just as a black shopper is more likely to be a shoplifter. (Yes, disparate enforcement against black vs. white shoplifters skews the raw statistics against black people. No, this doesn't explain the full difference. Controlling for income and other factors removes a lot of the difference; but store security doesn't have that information, so that's not relevant.) I think that's the "Bayesian statistics" you're talking about. The point is that these real, nonzero correlations do not justify making the lives of entire classes of people worse. I think you owe the poster an apology, not dismissive instructions to "chill".
  - meowface 9y ago
    You just said lonely men should move to those countries because it's easier to have sex there. The leap from that to "sex tourism" is not big.
- donttrack 9y ago
  Yes it’s ridiculous. Stop this nonsense

adbge 9y ago

Indeed, he should stick to his own race! /s Seriously, the rhetoric around dating foreign women is absurd. Gross and exploitative? A consensual relationship? /Really?/ Compare, for instance, the socially mandated opinions we're supposed to hold around adopting a child from a foreign country versus "mail-ordering" a bride. Most of the moral arguments for the former apply just as much toward the latter, yet the latter is "gross and exploitative"--why? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the first is associated with movie stars while the second is mostly low-status men?

donttrack 9y ago
Totally agree. I am sick and tired of being judged by people - especially western women - who thinks I am exploiting some young Asian woman. It makes me quite angry sometimes - they don’t know anything about us or how we live.
meowface 9y ago
The issue isn't with dating foreign women, but moving to a low GDP/standard of living country because you want to more easily find a partner. The reasoning is "women are more likely to date me, have sex with me, or marry me because my race is a status symbol / because I have money". This is not the foundation to a healthy relationship.
- mercer 9y ago
  I'm not saying I disagree, but still: why not? More than one person I know is in a relationship with someone from a 'poorer' country and both parties seem to be pretty happy with the outcome. And wasn't just men who were from the richer countries either.
  - meowface 9y ago
    I'm sure there are many people who meet organically with people from developing countries and start a genuine romantic relationship, but that doesn't appear to be what the parent poster was talking about.

donttrack 9y ago

It’s funny how women always consider it exploitative when men “pick up” an Asian woman. I met my wife in a Walmart in China and we are quite happy together. My friend is married to a Philippine woman. She worked at Apple and is quite well educated. Even is she wasn’t - I don’t know what the problem is.

noobermin 9y ago
It depends on the context. If someone is using their money and status as a way to coax someone into sex then that is objectionable. Then, there is the context that "Philippines/Thailand" bring sex tourism in some peoples' minds. That said, they explained themselves that they aren't exploiting people and most people are just being uncharitable in their reading. I'm just saying it's understandable. With the metacrap done, I'll say it's weird, especially when there is this odd stigma specifically around white men dating asian women[0]. If anything, thinking it's usually "exploitative" furthers racial stereotypes that asians[0] are somehow more naive and childish than white people. [0] The idea of an Asian woman itself is a little ridiculous because Asia is a continent, but that's a digression.
- dingaling 9y ago
  > If someone is using their money and status as a way to coax ... But that's exactly how it works in a bar in Detroit, or Edinburgh or wherever with people of the same 'group', just with a less explicit wealth signal. Here's a thought experiment; start chatting to a [man|woman] in a bar. When the subject turns to drinks, ask if they'd buy because you're on unemployment benefit and don't have much cash. Expected result? Now try the experiment again but buy the drinks and make sure to set your Porsche keyfob in sight when reaching for your wallet. Unless you are very, very charismatic and symmetrically attractive I expect two differential outcomes.
  - noobermin 9y ago
    I think you are making something like a soft-continuum fallacy. What I'm talking about is picking up girls in destitute poverty situations, in which they'd either starve and live in economic insecurity or date you. That is objectionable. It's different than being wealthy and dating someone who is economically secure but perhaps not as wealthy as you. Personally, I think trying to buff your sexual appeal using your wealth is kind of silly, but I understand it happens and I don't judge (in a moral way) people in the latter case I pointed out in the last paragraph.

slantaclaus 9y ago

I think it’s fine

CuriouslyC 9y ago

While I agree that going to a third world country to get laid is just a bad idea, I've spent enough time in the Philippines to learn about the issue from both sides. Family is a big deal there, and taking care of your family is way more important than basic physical attraction. Additionally, a western husband is a status symbol, above and beyond the financial support they provide. This mindset is so ingrained that mothers, aunts and other female family members will try to play match-maker with you when they know you're single. These girls aren't being exploited, if anything they're the hunters and you are the prey. Personally, I don't see a problem with a woman making a choice to support her family of her own free will. If that's the only way that an extremely awkward westerner can find a mate, I say go for it.

meowface 9y ago
Wouldn't they feel low self-esteem at the thought that the person they're dating or having sex with is only dating or having sex with them because they're western or have money? I feel like that wouldn't really abate their insecurity.
- drivingmenuts 9y ago
  On the most base level, it might fall under "had sex, don't care". But on a different level, that person now has a family that wants his presence, that looks upon him as being important. So, maybe that's a big boost to the old self-esteem.
  - meowface 9y ago
    But none of that is actual romantic love. As someone who had almost no contact with the opposite sex for most of my life, romantic love is what I was missing and what I needed. These are bandaid solutions to the problem.
    - CuriouslyC 9y ago
      People in arranged marriages in India report higher overall satisfaction than people in western marriages. You can learn to love someone, people do it all the time. Romantic love (i.e. infatuation, to use less loaded language) isn't all its cracked up to be either. It's just a state your body produces to encourage reproductive behavior. It produces great highs now, at the cost of great lows later, and thus it's terribly addictive. It's no more noble than heroin.

drivingmenuts 9y ago

It's also a survival technique. If you don't fit in with one group, find another that you can fit in. I doubt I could ever do that - I'm coming to grips with probably dying alone - but I'm not going to judge someone else for trying to avoid that fate.